Problems with sexual harmony

All married couples confront sexual obstacles in their lives
together. There are times when they are separated from each other by distance
and circumstances: jobs, emergencies, illness, or by occasions when the wife
takes the children to visit their grandparents, or when they rent a summer
cottage at the sea and the husband comes to spend week-ends with his family.

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These are all the result of external forces or personal choice.
In addition, there are the weeks when they must abstain from sexual intercourse
for a specified period before and after childbirth, obeying the doctor's
instructions or the wife's inclinations.

These are all interruptions to sexual love which every
husband and wife expect, and accept with the philosophy, or lack of it, inherent
in their individual personalities. Two problems which derive from the way women are constructed
are much more complicated. There is the question of intercourse during
menstruation and, though it is not a matter of sex per se,
there is the irrational way women behave before their periods begin.

Both husband and wife have a hard time understanding personality
changes in the half of the partnership which affect her whole outlook on life
and, naturally, sexual intercourse.

Why does a normally healthy loving wife, who meets her husband
halfway in making love, sometimes turn into a dismal caricature of her usual
self?

Within very recent years has medical science solved some of the
mystery of woman: that her body and personality change with the phases of her
menstrual cycle.

This has had far more publicity, but it is doubtful that even
now people understand it. When the husband and wife argue bitterly about their
boy, aged two, and end up with father flouncing out of the bedroom with his
pillow and the extra quilt seldom does either of them associate all that sound
and fury with the time of the menstrual month.

A girl and woman has her periodic ups and downs. Half of the
time she has a song in her heart, loves the whole wide world, and she feels like
the Queen of the May. At other times she is so depressed she knows that she
could touch bottom. All she wants to do is lock the door and have a good cry.

A woman admits that often she cannot understand this. She knows
that there are days and weeks when she is equable, and happy, and then she wakes
up in the dumps—irritable, nervous, achy.

These variations are not mere manifestations of female
temperament but definite responses to recurring physiological events.

As a matter of fact, Hippocrates, father of medicine, is
said to have ascribed the quirks and complaints he observed in women before
menstruation to "agitated blood" seeking release through the uterus. It was not
until the early 1930s that modern physicians recognized woman's psychological
and physical changeability as effects of genuine occurrences that are taking
place within the body.

Since then doctors have investigated the problem and concluded
that these vicissitudes are triggered by the two female hormones. Owing to the
cyclical increasing and decreasing action of these hormones produced in the
ovaries, a woman lives on an emotional and physical seesaw from the menarche to
menopause.

To complicate matters, no two girls or women on this planet are
altogether alike in their responses to their female hormones; and no woman is
herself the same from one month to the next. Many different factors, such as
current activities and tensions, health, outside pressures, and personal
problems, affect her.

If, for example, Junior breaks out in a rash when his mother
feels "normal," she is not especially disturbed; she thinks it is probably
chicken-pox. But if the rash should appear when she is "not herself," she is
sure it is nothing less than the seven-year itch. There are physical as well as
emotional conditions that vary from one cycle to the next.

This month a woman may have a headache; next month she may not
have a headache, but her breasts may be so swollen and tender that her bra seems
an instrument of torture.

The following cycle she may be afflicted by either of both
discomforts or by neither -- or by something entirely different. Once she learns
to understand the general pattern of her own shifting characteristics and to
relate them to the phase of her menstrual cycle, she is able to live more
comfortably with herself and others. And if her symptoms are severe, she is able
to recognize them as symptoms and to seek medical help.

During the first part of the cycle, which begins with the onset
of menstruation, an egg, as we know, gradually matures within its own tiny sac,
in one of the two ovaries.

This phase is like springtime. In a woman's body the seed of new
life is growing. This is the time of hope, of promise. A sense of exhilaration,
of well-being and happiness - it is called the follicular phase. It reaches its
climax in ovulation, approximately midway between the periods, when the egg
leaves the ovary and conception may take place.

During the follicular phase the estrogen level is high and makes
a woman feel her best. The ovaries also secrete the second hormone,
progesterone, produced by the sac in which the egg develops. After ovulation,
when the egg has left its covering, the empty shell becomes the source of
progesterone, the substance that prepares the lining of the uterus in case the
egg is fertilized.

If conception does not occur, the level of both hormones
drops on about the twenty-fourth day. The reproductive function has no need of
them at the moment. This represents one of Nature's failures. This is the phase during which a woman may move into the doldrums. Doctors call it the luteal
phase. Nature, however, is not given to mourning.

With menstruation comes the beginning of another cycle and the
next follicular phase. Once more the woman feels serene and in hill control of
her life and herself—always, of course, depending upon her unique basic
personality.

This then is the clue to the
emotional cycles of women. Fluctuating levels of ovarian hormones and their effect on her physiology.

As soon as medical scientists showed that these periodic
changes in spirit and body were real, not whimsical, they find out some of
the whys and wherefores, for the ovaries are not independent glands but are part
of the endocrine system that influences mind and body in many ways.

A girl or woman can forget all about this mechanism during the
first half of her menstrual cycle. When the ovaries are producing plenty of
their hormones in properly balanced quantities, she is as well and happy as she
can be.

Barring limitations from other causes, life is as smooth as a
bowl of cream, and she is completely her "normal self."

The second phase of the menstrual cycle brings emotional and
physical changes.

Actually these changes are also normal and can be so
interpreted. The trouble is that they vary in kind and intensity to such an
extent that a person may not always recognize them.

The brief eight-to-twelve-hour period following ovulation, during which a woman
can become pregnant, constitutes the yellow light that flashes a change of
signals and warns that the second, the
luteal, phase of the cycle is about to
begin.

Usually a woman cannot pinpoint the ovulation signal, but she is
justified in assuming that during the ten days to two weeks before the onset of
menstruation she may experience change in emotional and physical climate that begins with slight overcast and becomes gradually more cloudy.

During the luteal phase of the cycle, the imbalance of the ovarian hormone is
responsible for changes in certain physical processes. One is a small increase
in the rate at which the body burns up its normal supply of sugar.

During the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle a woman's body
consumes its sugar supply somewhat more rapidly than during the first part of
the cycle, and therefore the level of sugar in her blood falls, although very,
very slightly.

This in turn lowers the supply of oxygen to the brain a little,
for by a series of complicated chemical steps, blood-sugar is the chief supplier
of the brain's oxygen.

The amount of the drop may affect the way a person feels and
behaves for the time being.

Whatever other symptoms this drop may be responsible for,
authorities agree that it causes increased thirst and appetite and a craving for
sweets.

This is all part of the nervous stress and strain that might be likely to occur
during the luteal phase and to get worse as the onset of menstruation
approaches.

Somehow it seems to change a woman's attitude towards herself
and her life. The transient fall in blood-sugar level is, however, so slight in
degree that most doctors feel it is only one factor in a situation where
hormonal imbalance, nervousness, and psychological factors all act and react
upon one another.

The drop in blood-sugar may not prove to be a problem, but if it
does, the average healthy woman can count on the fact that it is temporary. The
condition may, in some cases, cause enough trouble to warrant medical help. This
is likely to consist of a simple recommendation.

Although the symptoms are acute they are not actually dangerous,
they are usually complicated by other psychoneurotic or even psychological
factors.

Other possible changes in emotions and temperament that can
surprise a woman in the luteal phase.

A placid person can become irritable; she may become so cranky
and irritable that her husband wonders whatever became of the dream girl he
married and wishes to goodness he could trade this woman in for a woman with more technique and
self-possession during life in general and sex in particular.

Her sense of humor is not the same as it is during the
follicular period. She loses perspective, so that trivial events seem
catastrophic.

She may be so bad-tempered and erratic that she upsets anybody
around her. She may become exceptionally talkative, rattling along, till she
bores everyone within range into a coma.

A demure, pleasant girl may have moments of anger and be
annoyingly aggressive, surprising her family and friends. A woman usually with
inner calm and security may, for the time being, nurse a sense of guilt, anger
and anxiety.

Most girls and women occasionally find it hard during this phase
of the cycle. A normally competent woman has difficulty making decisions. If she
drives her car, she may be involved in more accidents during this phase than
during the first half of the menstrual cycle.